Consumers of laundry detergents enjoy having the ability to customize the technologies they use in caring for their clothes and household fabrics. This is evidenced by the vast number of choices of cycles and variations to choose from on modern washing machines, the variety of pretreatment and wash additives, and the variety of laundry treatment compositions to choose from in the market place. Further, consumers also enjoy having the ability to customize the quantity of laundry treatment composition delivered to the wash.
Enzymes are a laundry treatment agent that can provide fantastic benefits to the consumer. Enzymes are widely known for raising the performance of primary and secondary detergency in laundry products. Enzymes can provide for stain removal, whiteness, color care, and fabric care. Typically, enzymes are provided as but a single component of a liquid or powder detergent composition. The level of enzyme can only be customized by the consumer by using more or less of the laundry treatment composition. So, to achieve customization of the enzyme level, the consumer also has to accept a corresponding increase or decrease in other benefit agents such as perfume, bleach, brightener, surfactant, softening agent, feel agent, and other benefit agents commonly provided in fully formulated laundry detergent products. The level of these other benefit agents may be increased or decreased to a degree that they are not pleasurable to experience or do not function.
Some enzymes commonly employed in detergent compositions are incompatible with one another. That is, the presence of a particular enzyme can decrease the activity of another enzyme. Different enzymes can perform different functions in a laundry detergent. For instance, one enzyme may be particularly efficacious at removing protein-based stains and another enzyme may be particularly efficacious at color restoration of fabrics by removal of pills. Providing laundry detergent compositions containing incompatible enzymes can be problematic.
Providing an enzyme as a stand-alone particulate product can be challenging because the particle sizes in which such enzyme is available are too small to be conveniently handled and small particles can undesirably become airborne. As such, providing enzymes in a formula or in a product that can be conveniently used by consumers to treat stains and restore color to fabrics is a challenge.
With these limitations in mind, there is a continuing unaddressed need for a particulate composition containing enzyme that provides consumers with the ability to conveniently control the amount of enzyme delivered to the wash.